Amazon has just announced an all-new Fire TV Stick 2 with Alexa Voice Remote for $39.99. The new device looks exactly like the previous model from the outside, but is all-new on the inside. Packed in is a quad-core 1.3 Ghz Mediatek 8127D processor with Mali-450 GPU. That’s a considerable jump from the 1 Ghz dual core CPU powering the previous generation Fire TV Stick. Connectivity also receives a bump up with the addition of dual-band/dual-antenna 802.11ac WiFi. Interestingly, ethernet connectivity is listed as “optional” so it seems the new Fire TV Stick may support OTG cables and USB-to-Ethernet adapters out of the box without needing to root the device. (See update below.)

RAM and internal storage remain the same at 1GB and 8GB respectively. The new Fire TV Stick 2 is still a 1080p device, so there’s no 4K support, but the new hardware does now decode h.265 HEVC natively. The new hardware now only ships with a voice remote, but is priced $10 less than the old voice remote bundle. The new Fire TV Stick 2 with Voice Remote is available for pre-order now and will arrive at customer’s doors on October 20th.

Update

Amazon has informed me the listing of ethernet as optional for the new Fire TV Stick 2 was a mistake. The product page has been updated to say ethernet is not an option for the Fire TV Stick 2.

53 comments

Specs seem very close to what Elias had guess a couple weeks back. Also says “HDMI extender”, so I hope they are back to providing a 3″ extender, instend of that crappy adapter that makes you use a full length hdmi cable.

No problem, I appreciate the info regardless. I like to get the main info up quick and fill the detailed specs in as I find them. So if you see an article immediately when it goes up, it may change a few minutes later. I’ll usually say “story developing…” at the end of the post if I’m still filling in the details.

Agreed on the remote. Amazon must have meant that you’ll get new features in the remote for the same base price (i.e. A voice remote instead of the old basic Stick remote), when they sent that note out to people who ordered the out of stock first gen sticks.

I use the game controller’s headphone jack all the time and find it works better than BT headphones. My only complaint is the size and lack of dedicated media buttons, so I usually have the regular remote next to me also.

In the past they have, but lately they’ve been releasing a single product at a time. The Fire HD8 tablet just got updated on its own without updating any of the other tablets. The basic Kindle was updated earlier this year without updating any other Kindles. So the fact a Fire TV 3 wasn’t announced today doesn’t necessarily mean we wont see it this year.

I’m working on it. Amazon PR is looking into it right now and will get back to me soon. I’ll write a separate post about it once I get more details.

As far as cheapest products, assuming it uses an OTG cable and USB ethernet adapter, I would go with this OTG cable for $1.69 and this ethernet adapter for $13 because they already work on the existing Fir TV Stick if its rooted and they’re one of the least expensive options.

Thanks again for researching this, I hope the answer is not no but it does not look good.

If one buys the traditional Fire TV is there a way to hook up an av wire for audio only that would somehow be able to hook into the box, perhaps via the usb? I would like to be able to listen to audio streaming and be able to turn the TV off.

Also, if you are listening to Tune In or IHeart radio or any streaming station, can you have a chosen screensaver appear after a certain number of minutes, perhaps something that would make the screen go completely dark?

This is what I want to, gonna get rid of my Nexus player in the bedroom and put my 1st gen Fire TV in there and get a 3 fire the living room. Compliment then with the new Chromecast that will be announced next week.

So the CPU is going from 40nm to 28nm. That should help power usage and heat. To this day, I still suspect my current FTV stick throttles due to overheating. I finally resorted to setting it to 720p to get smooth playback in Netflix.

Roku runs brightscript which is terrible. Only a few native apps like Netflix, Vudu, Youtube use HTML5. Also I will never buy another Roku after I tried to hook the newest stick to my older 2008 Toshiba TV and got a purple screen when playing something. Roku teases you will the UI and the app UI but when you play something purple screen. Just give us a HDCP error on the UI so we know it does not work. I hate being teased.

It’s not that HTML5 is hard to code for. It’s actually easier in a way because it’s a language used for the web, which most programmers already know. The issue is that HTML5 is not native code. It’s like running an app inside of another app. It just often results in a sluggish experience.

I did some reading yesterday and from what I gathered the CEO of Roku is a coder by trade and wanted to create a custom language for his box.

In the long run I think it’s foolish. You have a code base like Android that EVERYONE develops for. Why not create your own custom interface and take advantage of the android community.

I’ve looked at dozen’s of apps side by side. No matter what I see written, my own observation is that most Roku apps are clunky. It looks dated, the images are small, and getting around is harder for me than Amazon Fire TV.

All indication is that it is exactly the same remote, but we don’t know for sure. Dimensions of the remote are identical and the images being used are pixel-for-pixel the same as the existing voice remote. Plus, there hasn’t been an FCC filing for a new remote.

They need to maintain BT remote support on the Fire TV 1, 2, and Stick 1, so it would be silly to remove it from the Stick 2. I’m confident you’ll be able to use the older BT remotes on the new Stick, but I’ll be sure to test all remotes and controllers the day I receive the Fire TV Stick 2 and write a post about it.

I figured as much. Thanks for the testing, though I’m not sure I will hold off from preordering regardless. Fire TV Stick is great for traveling but the current model does get frustratingly sluggish sometimes so this should be a good replacement.

I wonder if we’ll see any Black Friday deals this year on the new ftv stick?!. I’d love to grab a bargain of this for anything less than $40..I’d bite for $35, and if we’re lucky maybe even as low as $25 in some limited means.